Update soon to come to HDR10

20th Century Fox, Panasonic Corporation and Samsung Electronics have formed a new partnership to create an open, royalty-free dynamic metadata platform for High Dynamic Range (HDR) through an associated certification and logo program, tentatively called HDR10+. Together, the three companies will form a licensing entity that will begin licensing the HDR10+ platform in January 2018.

The entity will license the metadata broadly to content companies, ultra-high definition TVs, Blu-ray disc players/recorders and set-top box manufacturers, as well as SoC vendors, royalty-free with only a nominal administrative fee.

HDR10+ is a cutting-edge technology, building upon the benefits of HDR televisions, which offers the best possible viewing experience for next generation displays. HDR10+ provides unprecedented picture quality on all displays with brightness, colour, and contrast automatically optimised for each scene. In previous iterations, static tone mapping applied a fixed enhancement across an entire piece of content.

There are several key benefits for partners who wish to adopt the platform for their HDR10+ compliant products. HDR10+ offers system flexibility, allowing a variety of partners, including content creators, content distributors, TV manufacturers and device makers, to incorporate this platform and improve the viewing experience for audiences. The HDR10+ platform was designed to allow for future development and innovation in order to deliver a more powerful technology in the years to come.

Samsung Electronics senior vice president of visual displays, Jongsuk Chu said, “As leaders in home entertainment content and hardware, the three companies are ideal partners for bringing HDR10+ into the homes of consumers everywhere. We are committed to making the latest technology available in our TVs and are confident that HDR10+ will deliver premium quality content and enhance the way you experience television programs and movies in the home.”

Panasonic executive officer, Yuki Kusumi said, “Panasonic has a long history of working with industry leaders to develop lasting technical formats. We are delighted to work together with 20th Century Fox and Samsung to develop a new HDR format, which will bring consumers so many benefits. By offering considerable HDR picture quality improvements across a wider range of TVs while accelerating the amount of premium HDR content available, we expect HDR10+ to quickly become the defacto HDR format.”

20th Century Fox executive vice president and Fox Innovation Lab managing director, Danny Kaye said, “HDR10+ is a technological step forward that optimises picture quality for next generation displays. HDR10+ provides dynamic metadata, which precisely describes every scene to deliver unprecedented picture quality. Working in partnership with Panasonic and Samsung through the Fox Innovation Lab, we are able to bring new platforms like HDR10+ to the market that more accurately realize the vision of our filmmakers beyond the theater.”

20th Century Fox, Panasonic and Samsung will announce further details on the license program along with a demonstration of HDR10+ technology at CES 2018.